China proposes US$3 billion carbon fund

November 13, 2007 (Financial News) – China’s State Council will plow about €2bn ($3bn) in taxes raised from the country’s trading in carbon emissions into a new state-owned fund that supports emissions-reducing ventures as part of its government’s strategy to foster and finance projects for climate change.

 

The China Clean Development Mechanism Fund, which has received financial and advisory support from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, will be managed by China’s Ministry of Finance.

It will use tax revenues from sales of certified emissions reductions to invest in environmental policy measures such as boosting energy efficiency, Reuters quoted Finance Minister Xie Xuren as saying.

India’s Largest Cement Maker Outlines Plans for Biodiesel Production via Jatropha Plantations

November 13, 2007 (Business Standard) – With crude oil prices at historical highs coupled with rising costs of coal, domestic cement companies are looking at alternate sources of energy for their upcoming captive power plants (CCP).

Since cement manufacturing is a highly energy intensive process and dependence on captive power is fast rising, analysts believe such initiatives will help cap the increasing input costs.

ACC, the country’s largest cement maker, has outlined plans for biodiesel production through a drive for jatropha plantations. “We will plant 5 million jatropha saplings by 2009 in a phased manner, in and around our cement plants,” said Ramesh Kumar Suri, head, Alternate Fuel Resources (AFR) business of ACC.

China: Conservation is in the Details

November 12, 2007 (Business Week) – Beijing has made big plans to save its rapidly deteriorating environment. The 11th Five-Year Plan, released in 2005, set ambitious, hard targets for the country in renewable energy use, energy efficiency, water conservation and other areas. But whether these grand strategies ultimately pay off may come down to details such as whether workmen can be trained to install better quality windows in buildings.

Natural Fuel Shuts Australia’s Biggest Biodiesel Plant

November 12, 2007 (Platts) – Natural Fuel Australia Ltd. has shut the Darwin biodiesel plant because of poor production economics, just a year after startup and barely months after making its first exports of biodiesel to Asian and US customers, several well-placed industry sources said Tuesday.

The biodiesel plant, which at 120,000 mt/year (2,400 b/d) of biodiesel production is Australia’s biggest biodiesel refinery and one of the world’s largest, was unlikely to restart any time soon, sources said.

The plant was shut in September or October, sources said. The plant opened in November 2006 and hit its nameplate capacity in March. In August, it announced its first export of 7,700 mt of biodiesel to Asia and the US. Calls to top officials from Natural Fuel Australia’s parent companies — Sydney-listed Natural Fuel Ltd. and Babcock & Brown Environmental Investments Ltd. — were not immediately returned Tuesday.

Thai Cops Beg for Cooking Oil to Fuel Fleet

November 13, 2007 (Reuters) – Thai police have put out an all-points bulletin for used cooking oil to fuel its patrol fleet as ballooning oil prices eat away the annual crime-fighting budget. Anyone is welcome to contribute a source for biodiesel, from large food processing plants to roadside fried banana stalls.

‘Thai police in the globalised world must have one hand holding pistols and arresting crooks and the other hand making biodiesel,’ said Lieutenant-Colonel Tepvisit Potigengrit, head of a biofuel project at a Bangkok police station.

The campaign began in May at three police stations in Bangkok. By the end of this year, police plan to have 80 of their 1,500 stations nationwide run their pickup trucks on biodiesel.

The cost of making biodiesel from used edible oils is 7 baht (S$0.32) a litre. Conventional diesel costs 28.64 baht.

Mission Biofuels to Increase Stake in India

November 12, 2007 (RWE via COMTEX) – Mission Biofuels (ASX:MBT) through its Mauritian subsidiary, Mission Agro Energy, will acquire a further stake in Mission Biofuels India. The acquisition of the shares of Indian Agribusiness Systems will increase the stake to 90 per cent from 70pc.

This is the company that Mission is using to develop its upstream feedstock business in the production and procurement of Jatropha seeds and oil.

The acquisition is subject to Indian authorities approval. It is expected to positively contribute to earnings in FY08.

D1 Oils plans to cultivate one million hectares of jatropha globally

November 11, 2007 (Hindu Business Line) – The UK-based global biodiesel producer D1 Oils plc — the world’s largest commercial jatropha cultivator — is targeting around 3.5 lakh hectares of jatropha plantations across India during the next four years, besides plans to invest in the setting up of downstream extraction units and necessary supply chain services in the country.

British Petroleum pact

The company, which recently entered into a partnership with British Petroleum, expects to start producing up to 1,000 tonnes of crude jatropha oil in the country by as early as next year, the CEO of D1 Oils India Pvt Ltd, Mr Samiran Das, told Business Line.

China launches CDM fund to address climate change

November 9, 2007 (Xinhua) – China launched a state-owned Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) fund Friday to finance the country’s efforts to address climate change.  The China CDM Fund, managed by the Ministry of Finance, will generate money from the current CDM projects that help China improve energy efficiency and protection of the environment by using clean energy for power generation.

Need for cheap palm oil drives deforestation

November 9, 2007 (Telegraph.co.uk) – Big international companies are fuelling the wholesale destruction of critically important rainforests and peatlands in Indonesia in their search for cheap palm oil, a hard-hitting report claims.

In pictures: Deforestation in Riau, Indonesia Greenpeace videos of rainforest destruction Vast swathes of pristine forest are disappearing in a slash-and-burn policy creating palm oil plantations to feed the demand of multi-nationals who accept no responsibility for the resulting degradation, according to Greenpeace.

Aerial shot of deforestation in Riau province, Sumatra

China, India growth force climate change action-IEA

November 7, 2007 (Reuters) – The International Energy Agency on Wednesday painted a grim picture of a tough and urgent global challenge to avoid the “alarming” climate change implications of soaring energy demand in China and India.

The report suggested that restricting global climate change within safe limits, as defined by the European Union, may be out of reach, at least at an affordable price.